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3. An SEO Plugin Does Not An Optimized Site Make
What about SEO plugins?
Here?s what you need to keep in mind: Just because you?re using a SEO plugin doesn?t mean that your site will be optimized.
Why not? Because a plugin only enables you to do SEO. It doesn?t optimize the site for you.
Generally, a plugin allows you to more easily modify, customize or enhance some aspect of your site. With a plugin, you don?t have to access code files or possess development knowledge. You simply need to tell the plugin what to do, and it does it.
When it comes to SEO plugins, the same is true. A SEO plugin might, for example, claim to optimize the meta descriptions on your site. It?s up to you, however, to write that meta description.
With those disclaimers in place, I recommend that you use an SEO plugin. Which one?
I use the Yoast plugin. It provides the greatest array of SEO tools and has the cleanest and safest code that I?m aware of. If you choose Yoast, please look over this tutorial. You?ll find out, step-by-step, how to harness its power.
Here are some of the features that I find particularly helpful:
It?s easy to adjust the site?s robots.txt to control indexation.
I can identify the canonical version of a page.
Breadcrumbs are simple and straightforward, providing a great user experience and search-friendly navigation.
The XML sitemap is automatically generated.
Yoast reminds me to optimize my titles, meta descriptions, headers and content for search.
Using the plugin is not difficult. It?s as easy as being aware of basic SEO and then filling in the right boxes.
Another solid SEO plugin is the All in One SEO Pack.
You only need one SEO plugin. As long as it does what it?s supposed to, you shouldn?t have to purchase or install additional ones. I use additional plugins for caching (WP Super Cache) and compressing, but not for strict SEO purposes.
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